Swiss Miss Dallas’ Shawne Fielding tries to convince Heidi-land that cleavage is cool.
It’s tough to shake a taste for tiaras. Her Excellency Madame Shawne Fielding, 31, wife of current Swiss ambassador to Germany, Thomas Borer, caught the tiara bug early on: she was Miss Dallas County in 1992. Fielding recently found herself scrambling for oxygen in an avalanche of bad press from Liechtenstein to Long Island after posing in the racy, German men’s magazine Max in a photo spread called “Cowgirl of the Alps.”
By Texas standards, the Max article was your basic small-town-girl-goes-man-hunting-at-Cattle-Baron’s stuff: cleavage, a cowboy hat, cleavage, six-shooters, cleavage, a horse, cleavage. But the Swiss, being a nation of bankers and army reservists with rifles under their beds, took umbrage at a buxom Dallas girl doing a Pretty Woman routine on the roof of their new embassy in Berlin. Next to the Swiss flag. Or maybe they didn’t fancy their ambassador’s wife posed in an American Beauty homage wearing a Swiss flag t-shirt, an American flag wrapped around her waist, and an ocean of flesh in between.
In this latest flap, big city newspapers like The New York Times have reported that Fielding was our Miss Texas and a second-place finalist for Miss America. In reality, Fielding lost the Miss Texas title and never made it to the Miss America pageant, but during her marriage to Sammons Communications’ heir Charlie Williams, took a shot at the Mrs. Texas crown and won.
At present, Fielding is working on a film project in London and planning an upcoming engagement at The Center for Torture Victims. Her newest tiara, the one she wears while posed in a wedding dress on horseback, awaits quieter days.
top 10 libraries
The busiest public branches in Dallas, based on people served in 2000:
1 Pleasant Grove 75,049
One of the smallest branches—in a blue-collar neighborhood.
2 Hampton-Illinois 67,466
This South Dallas branch offers free English as a Second Language classes on Saturdays.
3 Audelia Road 66,288
Computer and Internet classes keep patrons plugged in at this branch.
4 Lancaster-Kiest 60,704
This Oak Cliff branch serves just a hair more than its more northern sister branch.
5 North Oak Cliff 60,660
At 15,562 square feet, this branch is the fourth largest in the city.
6 Lakewood 59,772
This branch exhibits Lakewood area artists’ works annually in May. It also has a chess club.
7 Casa View 57,855
This East Dallas venue offers book discussion groups for adults and an American Girls Reading Club for kids.
8 Renner Frankford 51,811
This Addison branch keeps patrons coming back with programs on everything from Austin Street artists to skunks.
9 Fretz Park 50,221
Pajama storytime is a big hit at this Richardson branch, which also recently exhibited a survey of African basket weaving.
10 Walnut Hill 49,945
This North Dallas branch on Marsh Lane offers various programs in Spanish, including one to learn English.
Source: Dallaslibrary.org
London Homesick Blues
Fort Worth native pays tribute to her hometown with debut album.
Pop in Shea Seger’s debut album, The May Street Project, named after the street in Fort Worth where she grew up, and you immediately wonder: Sheryl Crow? Lenny Kravitz? Janis Joplin? In other words, as a singer, Seger’s all over the map. But even though she now lives in London and has a Texas twang laced with a cockney accent, Seger is still a hometown girl at heart. Her album features songs and spoken narrative about the eccentrics who lived on May Street in Fort Worth. “Although I was only living at May Street for a short time and at such a young age,” says Seger, “my experiences there had a great effect, not only on my life but on my music also.”
Seger, 21, has gotten as much attention from magazines like Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar as Spin. Part of the intrigue seems to be the contrast between her sweet, fresh-faced looks, the throaty, gritty texture of her voice belting out songs she’s written herself, and her style, which one writer describes as “Prada meets K-mart.”
After living in Fort Worth, Quitman, and Virginia Beach, she settled in London in 1998. That’s where she recorded The May Street Project, mixed by Commissioner Gordon, the man behind Lauryn Hill’s Grammy Award-winning solo debut. Critics compare Seger’s voice to Sheryl Crow’s but have yet to figure out how to classify her sound. Similar to her bohemian upbringing, the album is a peripatetic mix of old school guitar layered with contemporary beats. Seger’s broad range of influences include Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash, Rickie Lee Jones, and A Tribe Called Quest, making the album familiar but not too derivative of any one artist in particular. Her songs shift effortlessly through all the diverse sensibilities her musical influences bring to the table, but it’s clearly Shea Seger’s sound. When asked if she would ever move back to Texas, Seger replies in a southern drawl, “Hayall nawh!” A testament to the old saying you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.
quotables
“It’s good to snap sometimes—get all of that stuff out of me.”
—Rangers third baseman Ken Caminiti, after two broken bats in one game.
What People are Reading
Cool Readers
Darren Boruff owns the Artic Ice House in Northeast Dallas. “We manufacture and distribute the kind of ice you buy in a convenience store—120,000 pounds a day,” Boruff says. “So do you go into the cooler when it’s hot outside?” we asked. “All the time.” Boruff’s reading The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw. “I like it,” he says. “I’m in my early 30s, and I think we’ve taken them for granted.”
Bob Weaver has been in the swimming pool business since 1968. He builds high-end pools. “What was your most expensive pool?” we asked. “$350,000,” he said. “But our average is more like $50-$60,000.” Weaver’s reading Muddy Waters: The Mojo Man by Sandra Tooz. “I’m a blues fan,” Weaver says.
“I play a little bit of guitar myself. You can trace early rock and roll to Waters.”
Kim Assaad is a vice president at Spot Cooling Systems in Carrollton. They sell and rent temporary and permanent air conditioning equipment for commercial customers. Big stuff. Trailer mounted units that could blow the windows out of a house. Assaad’s reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Arlene Eisenberg. Assaad is doing a little expecting of her own. “I’m reading about the fourth month, because that’s where I am,” she says.
